July 28, 2006

Friday Humor - How did we Survive?

Just for kicks I wanted to share an e-mail I got from my mom. This is one of those mass e-mails that clutters everyone's inboxes and you may be tired of this kind of stuff. But it's actually pretty funny and has some good ol' down home wisdom. This is for anyone over 40 years old who wonders how they made it this far without being killed.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TODEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

4 Comments

Yes! Yes! Yes!

BRILLIANT POST! Oh, so true! How much stupidity we live in now compared to how all of us grew up! I drank out of hoses so many times, and played outdoors so much. I was never bored in my childhood. It's called imagination.

Typical of today's overkill protectionsim is this: now we have to have SEVEN year olds in a car seat. >>>>> WHY????? <<<<< If I had to do that when I was seven, I'd be embarrassed. I wore a seat belt because it was common sense. That's all that's needed. Not additional money to the car seat folks.

The generation described in this post is the same generation now undoing all these things. It isn't the kids that are destroying childhood, it's the adults. The same adults who lived the kind of childhood you described. We may be rosy about the past, but something had to be wrong because the past led to the present and the present isn't as rosy as we would like.